


The Geek and the Word on the Street

by Mums_the_Word



Category: White Collar
Genre: Computer Geeks, Gen, Missing Paintings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 02:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8186555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mums_the_Word/pseuds/Mums_the_Word
Summary: Neal must help the FBI with a sting to find missing masterpieces. However, his assistance may actually land him back behind prison bars.





	

     “So, how are you going to play this?” Neal asked curiously. “Are you sending Jones in?”

     Peter had a sly little grin on his face. “Actually, Neal, we’re sending in Millard Snodgrass. That’s you, by the way.”

     Peter relished Neal’s expression, which transitioned from surprise to dismay in the blink of an eye.

     “But Jones is the tech wizard, Peter. This would be right in his wheelhouse,” Neal argued.

     “However, you may want to re-think that truly horrendous moniker. During a caper, you want to blend in and not draw attention to yourself. With a name like ‘Millard Snodgrass,’ people will be lining up just to see what one of those looks like in the flesh.”

    “I created that cover with you in mind,” Peter said cheerfully. “Now you’ll just have to do what you do best—morph into that persona. Are you up for that, Mr. Flim Flam Man?”

     Neal couldn’t tell if that was a challenge or just a nasty attempt at payback, but it certainly was obvious that Peter was enjoying himself at Neal’s expense.

     This bit of subterfuge was a fishing expedition on the FBI’s part. The White Collar division had been investigating the ongoing thefts of priceless artwork from across the United States. Over the last year, respected museums in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston were hit, and works by Goya, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Greco, Klimt, and Dali had been stolen. There was no discernible pattern. The person, or team of persons responsible, inexplicably hopscotched from city to city, purloining a Goya here, a Caravaggio there, and so on and so on. The Bureau had feelers out to all the high-end brokers, but, as yet, not one of the masterpieces had been offered for sale.

     When Neal had initially looked over the list of stolen paintings, his heart began to race. Two of them were his works, a Greco and a Dali forgery, that he had swapped out years ago for the real deals. He had secreted the authentic ones away in an out-of-state cache where they had languished during his prison incarceration. Even now, chained to New York City, he still could not reach them. If his forgeries were recovered, they would be subjected to intense scrutiny by a panel of experts, and somehow he just might become their suspected creator. Neal just held his breath and hoped that the works never saw the light of day again.

     Unfortunately, Peter was on this case like a dog with a bone. It had taken a lot of tedious digging that entailed quantifying personnel and visitor logs and constructing the corresponding Venn diagrams before the “Archeologist” set his sights on a possible suspect. Ronald Edgemere was the one constant in the logistics. He was a ferocious art critic in his late sixties who seemed to have been around forever, and his reviews were syndicated in all the major US newspapers. He definitely knew his stuff, was arrogant and pompous, and nobody wanted to get on his bad side. Behind his back, people had nicknamed him “The Troll,” and Peter wasn’t sure if that disrespect came from the man’s short stature and less than appealing face, or his less than appealing disposition.

     Nonetheless, after Edgemere had visited a museum to critique something, a few weeks later, an invaluable painting would suddenly vanish. Since none of the works fell into the hands of stateside fences, Peter and his team suspected that the man was discretely selling them abroad, or he had a hidden trove of masterpieces somewhere. The FBI had quietly checked his financials, but could find nothing to suggest that there had been any windfalls of money. They did not have enough evidence to get a warrant for any deeper digging. The next best thing was to send someone in to get into his personal computer. Millard Snodgrass was to be that person.

     “Edgemere keeps a small office in Chelsea with just a few staff,” Peter explained. “We have found out that he uses the Treadstone Company to monitor his cyber-security, and I will be paying him a visit as one of Treadstone’s corporate honchos. During that impromptu visit, I will be informing him that we may have detected a breach in his system, and, since he is a preferred and valued client, my company has immediately sent me out with Millard, our ace tech geek, to install the proper patch to the firewall. I’ll reassure him that we certainly want to maintain the security of his Internet domain. And you, Neal, because you are so slippery and slick, will then seize the opportunity to download everything from Edgemere’s computer onto a flash drive.”

     “Aha, I knew it!” Neal pounced. “There is a method to your madness, Peter. You can’t let an FBI agent get their hands dirty by illegal cyber-snatching, so instead, you are allowing the criminal in the room to break the law and have his exposed backside flapping in the breeze. So, I’m sort of like Mr. Phelps on ‘Mission Impossible.’ He is always disavowed if he gets caught.”

     “So don’t get caught, Millard,” Peter said succinctly. “And for the record, Buddy, there is no ‘this is your mission, if you choose to accept it.’ This mission is a done deal with no discussion of whether or not you agree to it.”

     Neal just gave his handler a disgusted look.

~~~~~~~~~~

     The next morning, Neal, or a strange facsimile of the con man, presented himself at the FBI. Gone were the fedora, the tailored, expensive suit, and the handmade Italian leather shoes. The vision before Peter and his team looked years younger. His normally well-coiffed hair was now a messy mop of curls with errant bangs that fell in his eyes. He was clad in faded jeans and a black t-shirt overlaid with a red plaid flannel one. Black-rimmed glasses adorned his face, and well-worn Vans were on his feet.

     Everyone stopped what they were doing to peer at him in bewilderment.

     “What?” Neal demanded as he looked from face to face. “I had to get into character, and I think this screams ‘geek’ loud and clear.”

     “It certainly screams _something_ ,” Peter muttered.

     Jones was the first to recover and handed Neal a miniature flash drive.

     “This little puppy has enough storage space to download the Library of Congress,” he promised. “Do you know your way around hacking computers, Caffrey, or do you need a crash course in cyber-sleuthing?”

     Neal just favored the junior agent with a grin as he answered.

     “You treat a computer like you would a woman, with respect and gentle finesse. Then it all comes down to pushing the right buttons to get what you want.”

     Everybody rolled their eyes at that statement. Neal ignored them and pocketed his little gismo as he and Peter set out for Edgemere’s office. Once they were there and had been introduced to the man, Neal/Millard was shown to the man’s personal computer, and Peter cajoled the art critic into accompanying him to lunch. That was the least that Treadstone could do for a possibly compromised customer.

     Millard the Geek had no trouble inserting the flash drive into an available USB port. He watched intently as the little green light indicated that it was quickly collecting data. Being distracted, he was suddenly startled when he felt a warm breath from behind whisper in his ear.

     “Hello, Neal. Nice threads.”

     He whirled around and was dumbfounded to behold Alex Hunter with a “cat that swallowed the canary” expression on her attractive face.

     “Alex,” Neal recovered quickly, “ you look ….. _amazing_ ,” was the only adjective that came to mind.

     The striking young woman was clad in an exceedingly tight little black dress with cutout slits in the middle that showed off the tantalizing ivory skin of her midriff. A strand of obscenely large pearls was around her neck, and black stiletto heels made her at least four inches taller. She now stood with a hand on her hip and a foot tapping impatiently.

     “What exactly are you doing here, Neal,” she demanded.

     “Well,” the con man countered. “I could ask you the same thing.”

     “If you really must know, I’m Mr. Edgemere’s Girl Friday,” she sniped. Then after a beat, she added, “And his Girl Saturday and Sunday, as well.”

     Neal gave her a wry look. “It’s obvious that you want something from him, Alex. But, seriously, using seduction to get what you want seems so beneath your standards.”

     “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we,” Alex said. “Ugly, old Ronald has to earn his prize. He has to show me what _he_ has before I show him anything of mine.”

     “And what does he have to show you,” Neal asked innocently.

     “Oh, come on, Neal, we go too far back to play these kinds of stupid games. We both want the same thing, although you are probably the FBI’s clandestine emissary. Back off. I was here first!”

     Neal chuckled and looked admiringly at Alex. “The FBI finally connected the dots, but how did you glom onto this so fast?”

     “Oh, Neal,” Alex sighed. “Are you so far out of the game that you have forgotten to listen to the whispers on the streets? A lot of people in the know suspect that Edgemere is responsible for all that missing artwork. I actually have an interested buyer lined up for several pieces, and I just may keep a few for myself.”

     “Well, when you get to that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Neal pleaded, “perhaps you will keep two very specific paintings for yourself—the Greco and the Dali. They just may be the ones that I forged and swapped out years ago.”

     This time, Alex was the one to laugh out loud. “Trust Neal Caffrey to gum up the works!”

     “Yeah,” Neal agreed, “you could say that my life is a bit complicated at the moment.”

     Alex ran a finger down the side of Neal’s face. “Take your little flash drive back to your jailers. They will not find a damn thing of interest on it. I’ll keep working things from my end, and maybe, for old time’s sake, I may even keep you, and only you, in the loop.”

     When Peter and Edgemere returned from lunch, Alex ducked out of sight. Neal’s nimble fingers slipped the back-up drive into Peter’s pocket before he then begged off to go home and change his clothes.

~~~~~~~~~~

     As Alex had foretold, Jones could find nothing incriminating in the information from the art critic’s computer. The FBI was back to square one. However, one evening a week later, Alex knocked on Neal’s loft door and sailed in with great panache. Tonight she had foregone the elegant, suggestive clothes for yoga pants and a tunic top. To Neal, she still looked sexy as hell. Plopping herself down on Neal’s couch, she smiled contentedly.

     “I had a very enlightening weekend,” she began as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

     Neal sat down beside her and handed her a glass of wine. “Do tell,” he urged.

     “I’ll bet you didn’t know that Edgemere owns a little secluded cabin in Upstate New York near one of the Finger Lakes. Most likely, nobody knows about it because it is deeded in his second cousin’s name, and that poor soul has been residing in a nursing home for the last five years. I suppose one could call Edgemere’s little hideaway rustic and cozy. I would call it ‘the big score.’”

     “So, what was the price that you had to pay for admission,” Neal asked ruefully.

     Alex laughed. “Neal, you are such an Old World gentleman to worry about my virtue. Let me assure you that all is intact. It would seem that lecherous old Ronald didn’t really need his little blue pill because I became indisposed at an inopportune time. If a woman just mentions anything about the mysteries of her body, old farts like Edgemere are ready to run for the hills.”

     Then Alex became serious. “I came here to offer you a deal, Neal. We have a long history, and you have helped me out on the odd occasion when I have come to you. I owe you, and I always pay my debts.”

     “I’m listening,” Neal said warily.

     “I intend to clear out Edgemere’s little mini art gallery this week and disappear without a trace. However, eventually he’ll know that I was the only one who could have taken his stash when he goes to check on it. I’m willing to text you the location after I do my thing, but I’ll leave one painting behind for the FBI to find before Edgemere arrives. That should be enough to put him behind bars so he’s no threat to me. Don’t worry, Neal, I won’t leave one of your paintings behind.”

     Neal remained quiet while he pondered this scenario.

     “C’mon, Neal,” Alex urged. “This is a fair deal. I get my masterpieces, and the Bureau gets their man. It’s all good. And now the value of the real Greco and Dali that you have stashed away somewhere have suddenly skyrocketed, so you’ll make a mint when you can finally off-load them after you’re free of the FBI. See—it’s a win-win for everybody, except for ‘The Troll,’ of course.”

     Neal looked at her for a brief second, then raised his glass of wine and clinked it to hers.

     “Deal,” he smiled.

~~~~~~~~~~

     A few days later, Alex texted an address and the terse words, “All clear except one.”

     Neal relayed that address to Peter, who seemed suddenly suspicious.

     “How do you know about this, Neal?”

     “I listen to the word on the street,” Neal said innocently.

     Peter waffled and worried about not having probable cause to search the cabin, forcing Neal to roll his eyes and sigh. Eventually, however, the FBI made it happen, finding a stolen Caravaggio and arresting Ronald Edgemere. Neal turned a deaf ear when Peter complained that the other paintings remained missing. You just could not satisfy some people. But, it served Peter right for attempting to embarrass Neal by making him take on the persona of a geek. Maybe the FBI would one day get the concept that there are consequences when you mess with Neal Caffrey!


End file.
